Belize to improve education with $10 million loan from the IDB

Monday, June 16th, 2014

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a $10 million loan designed to help Belize improve its primary education and the governance of its education system.

The program aims to prepare the teachers of today and tomorrow by supporting training institutes for new teachers and by training close to half of the country’s current primary education teachers.The program will also train primary school principals and develop and implement an information system for education management, which will benefit all of the country’s primary and secondary schools.

In recent years the IDB has increasingly supported efforts to improve education and quality of teaching in Belize, and education is one of four priority areas in the Bank’s current country strategy with Belize. The program directly supports Belize’s national education strategy (2011-16), designed to alleviate high rates of grade repetition (only 48 percent of girls and 38 percent of boys make it all the way through primary school without repeating a grade), and overall low academic performance.

This is a 25 year loan with a grace period of five years, and an interest rate pegged to the LIBOR.